Germany overtakes UK for 2nd most popular country for Windows Phone

Looking at the popular app ...I'm a WP7!, we can see from the 152,000+ users of the app that Germany has overtaken the UK for second place with number of Windows Phone 7 users. Of course, the United States remains well ahead with three times the users (30%)--not a surprise with the size of the country nor being Microsoft's home turf. Still, Germany (10%) overtaking the UK (8%) is noteworthy as it shows a growing trend of where the phones are going and where Windows Phone is gaining traction.

However, it will be very interesting to see how this trend continues for two reasons:

Germany faces a particularly unique problem: HTC Windows Phones could soon be banned there and removed from shelves before the holiday season is complete. The problem stems from a ruling by a German court granting an injunction against HTC for a single patent claimed by IPCom (Press Release, PDF). We'll save the analysis of another day (you can read Florian Mueller in the mean time), but with the HTC Titan and Radar being the flagship devices this year, not to mention the near universal praise they have received, this could have a substantial impact on future growth in Germany until this HTC-IPCom patent issue is resolved.

We think with those combined issues, Germany's second place may be short lived here. Needless to say, it will be fascinating to see how these trends continue. Pick up ...I'm a WP! here in the Marketplace.

A sample of 150,000 is huge for getting demographic numbers. Absolutely staggering. I did my undergraduate work at Siena College in NY in political science, known for its polling and data collecting in the North East. Most opinion polls only have a few hundred samples. One thousand is very impressive. One-hundred fifty thousand? No public opinion polls nor demographic data often has such numbers (US Census certainly wins though).

While the exact number could be off, it's a clear (very clear) indication of Windows Phone demographics and there's no other data that compares.

Unless you have a good theory as to why Germans suddenly started using I'm A WP7! to such an extent that it overtook those in the UK by a substantial margin? I'd be interested in hearing that one...

I see what you are saying. I've seen that data and can get the latest for a post (we get the data from the developer directly). It's not shown in the app due to space, but AFAIK, there isn't anything substantial there.

Your degree doesn't really change the validity of your conclusions =)
It's not the number of people that make a sample "good." It's the perentage of people relative to the sample (150,000 is relatively small considering the number of Windows Phones that are out there) also (2) the randomization, which I don't think sufficient evidence exists to prove "I'm a WP7 App" is randomized or even representative of the Windows Phone market.
These are the things that actually make a good sample. You can't say 150,000 is huge without even knowing the number of phones that have been sold. No evidence exists that shows the app accurately reflects the market or evenly randomized.

But is there any evidence to prove it doesn't. When the app had less than 10,000 subscribers, the US had about 35% and has bounced up and down between 32 and 35% since then, only recently dropping down to 30%, I assume because of the Windows Phone surge currently going on in Europe, and even parts of Asia. That's a pretty consistent number for the sample size to grow 1500%.
Other stats of note. Currently 59% of all registered users are running Mango (or Mango-beta) while 11% remain on the pre-NoDo build of the OS. Again, for me very probable and believable. I have watched the Mango number grow steadily since launch, primarially moving users from NoDo to Mango. The pre-NoDo count has only moved from 13 to 11% in the same time. Most likely noobs who have probably never plugged their phone into a computer or connected to Zune. Again, this helps to show that the app represents a wide cross-section of users. One other stat; 29% of all users are on the Blue theme. That has remained fairly consistent. As the blue theme is the "out of the box" color for many Windows Phone (it was/is for my Surround) it again indicates to me that many users never even change their theme color, or bother to figure out how. Or maybe, more people just like blue. Not sure.
Point is, like it or not, this is the best cross section of Windows Phone users you are ever going to find. And I bet the numbers are much more accurate than you realize.

Not that this is any more scientific, but my stats for Network Dashboard show the number of trials and paid downloads for the UK are almost double that of Germany. Again, not scientific at all, but it's just as scientific as the I'm a WP7 app. :D

Take your example: You show nearly double the amount of users for the UK as for Germany. Fine, no problem.

What if that reversed itself in a month from now? What would you suspect? That's what we are talking about here, not a snapshot but a trend over the last few months. The UK used to have a substantial lead, now Germany does.

Sure ... I'm just not sure that it's necessarily accurate from a platform standpoint, though. It's accurate for the I'm a WP7 app, of course, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate for the Windows Phone platform as a whole.
For instance, with Network Dashboard I have a sample of 45,000 downloads. Total statistics, starting around September 7th until today show that the US has 46.47%, followed by UK (11.83%), Italy (4.96%) and Germany (4.69%). However, if you look at the stats from November 1 to today, you see this:
United States (34.57%)
UK (15.46%)
Germany (7.54%)
Italy (5.89%)
That tells me that Germany is indeed picking up steam, but that the UK is too... at least as far as Network Dashboard downloads are concerned. :) Additionally, I saw a 20-25% bump in both trial and paid downloads from 11/17 on ... the day the Lumia was released in the UK.
I'm absolutely not disputing that the numbers are really interesting. What makes me happy is that the numbers overall are increasing and that we're seeing traction for the platform!

Well, unless I'm missing something the majority of phones should be updated to Mango at this point. I'm not disputing that I'm a WP7 has more downloads (I believe Daniel said 150,000) ... but Network Dashboard's 45,000 is still a pretty significant number.
All I was doing was proving a point that the stats of a single app cannot be used to infer overall stats for the platform.

I used to like this app for seeing what is going on in the world of windows phones but
the stats are misleading
for example 30% is the USA but 38% is other ? not this should be broken down much more that your largest perscetage being other

also we know that the lumia nokia is selling well over seas but there is no mention
on the noka phones on the stats or other phones we have no idea of what they are doing ..
if we saw more of the stats I would be happy.
Mark

I'm a developer who has a game which has around 250.000 downloads and I can also confirm the above results. Germany is the second country we get our most downloads after USA, than UK and others follow.

Hey folks, just a couple of quick points on this topic: First, although its impossible to get absolutely exact numbers for Windows Phone statistics, remember, this data spans 177 countries, 152,000 users, and data from pre-BETA of the OS, but also, and I think this is important, is a free app with "universally applicable target market". The average use of i'm a WP7 is an average user of Windows Phone. Some of the other apps in the Marketplace, even with a large amounts of data, will typically only appeal to niches of users. In reality, probably around 60% of devices worldwide have been updated to (or now ship with) Mango. Also important: Although WPCentral always receives the first "heads up" for exciting changes, we do provide RAW stats to users and organizations upon request. Just shoot us an email via the support link in the app and we'd be glad to give you what you need, without providing any 'user-specific' data of course.

...and as a clarification for earlier comments: There is no "unknown data". There is such a tremendous amount of data that we generally only show "top" information. :) We have the breakdowns for all 177 countries posted, etc.

am i the only one that think it's incredibly stupid to use this app as any type of indictator of, how popular the platform is, what countries are the most popular, or any type of statistical information for that matter.
there is absolutely no scientific relevance to this app in making an conclusions about how popular wp7 is, or in what countries wp7 is popular.
/rant

So what do you suggest we use instead? The number of people who logged in to Facebook this month, or the number of Angry Birds downloads. Do you really believe that anything you read from organizations like Gartner are any more accurate. Yes, they get paid millions of dollars for dishing out their crap, but they honestly don't have a clue. Ask four of their analysts and you will get for different opini....oh, I mean accurate analytical forecasts.

I agree with Daniel here, when doing statistical research in poli sci and econ, we consider a sample size of 1000 satisfactory regardless of how big the actual population size is...1000 + 1, 2, x will not have a significant effect on your results.